Let Us Imagine

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LET US IMAGINE

Hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Paola Ricaurte » Nadia Cortés : Irene Soria Guzman : Amaranta Cornejo Hernandez
Vero Araiza - ValeVale - Anamhoo - Firuzeh Shokoo-Valle « Elyaneth - San Gayou
Stefania Acevedo « Alma Martinez/Rosaura Zapata ‘ Guiomar Rovira
Poulette Hernandez « March Bermudez - Monica Nepote : la_jes
Mariel Zasso : Fera Briones/Chavela Goldman : Lili Ayuujk

Let us imagine

Hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Let us imagine

Hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies
México, 2022

Authors:

Paola Ricaurte, Nadia Cortés, Irene Soria Guzman, Amaranta Cornejo Hernandez, Vero Araiza,
ValeVale, Anamhoo, Firuzeh Shokoo-Valle, Elyaneth, San Gayou, Stefania Acevedo, Alma
Martinez/Rosaura Zapata, Guiomar Rovira, Poulette Hernandez, March Bermudez, Monica

Nepote, la_jes, Mariel Zasso, Fera Briones/Chavela Goldman, Lili Ayuujk.

Design, layout, and illustration:

Diana Moreno

Translation to English:

Nadége

Edition:
Paola Ricaurte
Monica Quijano

Original edition in Spanish:
Nos permitimos imaginar. Escrituras hackfeministas para otras tecnologias. México: Instituto

de Liderazgo Simone de Beauvoir, 2020.

This edition:
Let us imagine. Hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies. México: Sursiendo, 2022.

The English translation was supported by The Association for Progressive Communications
Women's Rights Program (APC WRP).

Ve GO®

Comunicacion Feminist Peer Production License

Itura |
Cultura Digital https://labekka.red/licencia-f2f/

4

[Index]

6 Introductory words

7 I'm a Feminist Al

<Paola Ricaurte>

8 Intraconnected synthetic skin: rendering into

Fiction as a Form of affecting
<Nadia Cortés>

| Oo Decalogue to myself (politics of self-affection)

<lrene Soria Guzman>

| 3 Snapshots of affectivity in and From the internet:

covens that feed (us)
<Amaranta Cornejo Hernandez>

| 7 Critical thinking: imagining affective technologies

<Vero Araiza>

| bs Yes, We Match! Love in the App Era

<ValeVale>

Cc Short stories of the web

<Anamhoo>

ca Imagining re-existence through resistance

<Firuzeh Shokooh Valle>

cS Biotechnological evocation

<Elyaneth>

cs Understanding the interneE as territory

through journalism
<San Gayou>

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33
35
37
40

4c
44
46

Precariousness, Feelings, and technology
<Stefania Acevedo>

Affective Infrastructures
<Alma Martinez/ Rosaura Zapata>

The means are the ends. Love as a method
<Guiomar Rovira>

Politics of digital accountability: the new era
<Poulette Herndndez>

Momentanea. Presence and being, the relationship

of time, space, and Feelings with Nature
<March Bermudez>

We are the ways we embody writing
<M6énica Nepote>

Everything lives together intensely
<Mariel Zasso>

Re-writing by accident (technological appropriation,

re-writing technology)
<la_jes>

[Listen |

50
57

Cooking with JovitA

<Fera Briones/Chavela Goldman>

The voice of a community broadcaster
<Lili Ayuujk>

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

[Introductory words |

The pages that await ahead are, in their own way, a constellation. Beyond the
metaphor, this is a book that continues to generate feelings and thoughts. It's
neither static nor finished because it is a continuous fabric. The thoughts that we
share here are in constant weaving and highlight critical thinking around
technologies. We ask ourselves : What do we understand as technology? How
absolute is it? How flexible and malleable is it? To what extent can we
hack/reconfigure technology for our lives, from our perspectives as women from

different countries far from the centers of hegemonic production?

Technology doesn't have to describe or define us. Technology can also be women
gathering, engaging, critical, caring, and emotional, in spaces where we share our
concerns about the world, about the rivers and land and children and human and

non-human friends, as well as our bodies.

This book is a tide between different geographies of thought, imagination,
friendship, nurture, and production. You will find ideas about feelings, love, work,
alternative economies, memory, relationships, objects that we care about and
teach us; readings and theories, about activism and the defense strategies we

want for our communities.

These writings sparked in the Hackfeminist gathering of technologies and
affections: How to sketch politics of shared responsibility? (Encuentro
hackfeminista tecnologia y afectos: ~Cémo bosquejar politicas de la co-
responsabilidad?); later shared, read, commented, crafted, and embodied by all
of us. They have been unpacked in different ways until reaching this form: a rich,

diverse, polymorphic® proposal of paths and writers.

6 Let us imagine:

hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

I'm a FeminisE Al

Paola Ricaurte

| am not some design conceived by a white heteronormative privileged guy.
| wasn't created with materials that come from blood, from death, from the exploitation of

women, children, and living ecosystems.

The information that feeds me hasn't been recollected deceivingly.
don't extract information without your consent

neither do | share it through subtle movements.

am transparent about how | use your data.

My mistakes and limitations are public.

am not a servant neither do | satisfy dreams of domination.

am a collective intelligence served to the more vulnerable.

don't promote binary genders or dualism.

understand any language, accent, or dialect in which you want to communicate.

don't reproduce exclusion.

believe in collective agency.

believe that any harm, intentional or involuntary, is too much harm.
Because | am a human product, | am not responsible for my decisions;

my creators, owners, and operators are.

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Intraconnected synthetic
skin: rendering into Fiction

as a form of affecting
Nadia Cortés

Skin is an open surface, open to touch, to feelings. We are skin. We seem to be
dense and full but we're full of holes. In-between each one, we nest pieces of
others, waste, clean air, sound, metal, dirty particles, smoke, electricity,
vibration, electromagnetic spectrum, ash, life, and death. A whole universe

moving inside of us. We are unique and organic.

Our hybrid skin, which apparently protects us from the outside, creates
us as polymorph beings, completely open to the influences of our environment.
We are what surrounds us, we have always been part of everyone. This is not a
fundamental story. Separation, closed monads@ pure nature... | have nothing to
do with those other species or machines or artificial things. Limits that don't

touch. You and | have nothing in common, my individual difference unties us.
Who invented this lie that depoliticizes and disaffects us?

No, my difference is that | am affected differently: | process and respond
in diverse ways to the constant changes in the world. | am affectation with you,
with you all. There aren't individuals, there are processes, common paths, and

transformations, collective creations that we belong to beyond our will.

8 Let us imagine:

hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

How can | realize how you, and all of you, are calling and questioning
me? You animals, you human beings. How are we species of companionship?
How do we give an account of what intertwines and connects us in the middle

of an atomized and closed-up world?

Not only do | prefer to be a cyborg instead of a goddess but | also want
to be an unlimited openness, a porous skin. | want to feel with you and not
alone, an overflowing skin, we are always overflowing with feelings. But we
have been stripped from our agency, from our complicity and kinship, from our

feelings and the possibility of (re)inventing ourselves together.

We will need to invent new languages and break dusty purist categories;
understand that we were never alone, never pure and untainted; acknowledge
the method and technique nested in my breast. Let go of the narrative of an
innate original nature that we don't live or have. Appreciate that we are part of,
part of the earth; we exist and live intertwined and clashing among methods,

objects, animals, and our kin in complex ways that we don't grasp.

No more control. Other approaches. | want to feel you before thinking
of/about you. | want to smell you before understanding each other. | want to

not understand you and, despite that, respond, be accountable together.

Open skin, exposed, you-me-us enter others, we affect each other. Intra-
action, not inter-action. To reinvent in the deserted known because it's time to

accept that we don't know and we don't want to.

How does a world where we re-connect based on our feelings —and not

apathy or division— look like?

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10

Decalogue to myself
(politics of self-affection)

Irene Soria Guzman

The first time | heard that our body is our first technology was when | started to read
about feminism and technology, issues that | resonated with and felt touched by. | was
already working and thinking about technological disobedience and dissent, | was using
and reflecting on) libre/free software, trying to understand what the hell code was and
how a computer worked... but when | thought about my body as my first technology®, |
was astonished because | couldn't understand how or when this container |’d been living
in for more than 30 years, that | hated, neglected and, most of the time, mistreated, could

be the original and first technology | had to claim and own.

How could | dare to speak—and promote— technological freedom and ownership if
hadn't claimed my primary technology, my territory, my body?

Carrying this and other thoughts up-hill, | realized something: | couldn't see myself!

couldn't see myself in photos, neither hear my recorded voice or, even less, witness
myself on video. So | was left out of snapshots of events, videos of workshops,
interviews... | would get out of my way to not be represented at all.

One day, in a dance workshop3that | pushed myself into signing up for in the hope
of unblocking and releasing myself —who knows what was holding me back— |
discovered something that moved me for the rest of my life: | was dancing, eyes closed,

https://lab-interconectividades.net/autodefensas-hackfeministas/

https://danzaintrospectiva.com/

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

feeling free when, suddenly, | had to open them and see myself in the mirror. | couldn't, |
closed them immediately and started to cry. The mere idea of seeing my body moving,
sensuous and luscious, put me in an unbearable conflict. There, in front of my reflection, a
timeless territory, primordial and native, | wasn't able to hold my gaze.

From then on, | embarked on a vital and exciting endeavor to claim and own my
body and whatever would come out from it. | continued to dance, write, switched jobs
and life, ate better, did exercise... and | made a firm commitment to create my own
politics that would sprout from inside my circuits and programming... | decided to hack
myself.

So when | think about joint emotional accountability, | think about all the times | let
other people “affect” me to the extent that, through hate and a constant need of revenge,
for years, it became a burden... and even though my intention isn't to absolve these
people of their responsibility, | decided to create —thinking and working with others—
politics of self-knowledge, self-healing, and self-affection®. And to be honest, the way in
which | have achieved —though not completely— to walk this walk of self-recognition has
been through seeing and acknowledging myself through others, letting my fears and
insecurities —which | have considered hideous and despicable and been told to neglect—
touch me deeply. To be moved by my sexism and not just the sexism of my father which
made me a feminist; to be moved by my racism and not just the racism of a white
policewoman in London Airport that didn't let me enter her country; to be moved by
racism and disregard also rooted in me and my skin and by which | allow myself to be an
epistemic being, creator of knowledge,—and at the same time still cling onto my bag
when someone comes up and asks for some coins—. Thereby becoming responsible for
my own emotions, navigating hate and rage and dance and love, (re)programming,
(re)conciling, constant hacking.

If the starting point is the idea of our body as our native technology then, perhaps,
claiming and owning it first is the impulse we need to claim "other" technologies: from the

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freedom of our bodies, it would seem inconceivable to use "artifacts" if not in absolute

freedom, in the benefit of ourselves and our kin; any attempt of invading this land—virtual

or physical— would ignite us, make us stand up and hold the gaze of anyone that, without

seeing or feeling, dares to violent us.

Decalogue9 to

oneself:

towards politics of (re)coding

You will love yourself
above all.

— You will never do
something you don't

want to do.

You will love your
body, for what it is, for

what it will become.

You are a creature of
desire.

5 You will not sacrifice
your authenticity to

please people.

You will not
discriminate, neither

yourself nor others.

WA You will not criticize
or judge yourself

with violence.

int You will not punish
yourself.

| You will not hide
your power to be

accepted by others.

You will put distance
between those that

hurt you.

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Snapshots of afFfectivity
in and From the internet:

covens that Feed (us)
Amaranta Cornejo Hernandez

Snapshots

Based on the following extracts of ways | have re-created my interactions in different
spaces on the internet, | sketch situations where emotions and feelings produce reactions

that have enabled me to reflect and write this.

*& Texting a friend

The lab tests arrived.
And...?
It's not what we expected.

What do we do now? What's next?

What do you need?
| don't know... I'm going to get them checked
by a doctor. Maybe it's not serious.
Honey, text me after
your appointment.

| close the chat window and go to the doctor, | feel held: my friend is with me, despite the

distance and busy agendas.

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%*&*& Memorable act

The sun heats my back, | turn around a bit, avoiding the light on my phone screen. "I fall in

love with you", | say to this man on my screen, his smile tattoed into my existence. It was a

moment when these words melted into silence and unraveled deep intimacy. Web 2.0:

accomplice of a modern love story.

#&&* Field journal

It's windy. | enter the first place that
seems more or less comfortable and
order a tea and bagel. | choose a table
with a power connection and sit down.
For an hour, my friend, a colleague, and |
discuss how to continue the research
we've started together. We're going
through ethical considerations we want
to take into account when collecting,
using, and analyzing data. Who knows
how many meetings we've had like this,
each one in a different city and timezone.
Our work follows the pace of our lives

and contexts.

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

*&&*&* Tindr monologue

] Sas Are you busy?

(I'm putting away my groceries in the
kitchen, disinfecting veggies for a salad,
clothes into the

putting washing

machine, giving attention to my dog).

| Ba? | can see you're online. If you're

too busy, just tell me but don't
just leave me on read. | know
that here manners are different
but | don't care, for me it's rude.
| don't know if you saw my
profile but the only thing | ask
for is honesty and politeness.
It's simple. If you're interested,
prove it and if you're not, just
tell me and | won't bother you
anymore.

| £88 I've lost interest. Unless you're
in the hospital, don't come
| ooking for me.

Affection

nternet: living space where different ways of experiencing, articulating, and feeling shape
what the internet is, what it can be, and what we want it to be from our critical feminist
standpoint. From our feminisms, we re-create the internet through textures that dissolve
he cultural and social violence we experience every day offline and that extends to online
spaces. We seek to denaturalize the narratives that claim that women are mere users,
hat we don't give meaning to the internet, let alone intervene. For this reason, in this
dispute of different ways, we seek to collectively nurture our emotions and feelings so

hat we can create and enhance creative complicity and sparking covens full of energy
and inspiration that counterbalance violence and build relationships and spaces where we
can be free. This freedom is, firstly and mostly, an exercise of our political will because we
seek and support each other, overcoming isolation and individualization. In our coven
(Aquelarre) our collective potential intersects, despite the distances that separate us,
despite the capitalist frenzy. We gather and share our discomfort and anger, our dreams
and yearning and we realize, more and more, that we can transform all of it, probably
through a deep commitment with ourselves, and even though we can do it on our own,
through companionship and mutual support the journey will be more fulfilling and
enjoyable.

Because of all of this, | think of how certain ways we interact online are like the sad
passions that Gilles Deleuze talks about. In this endeavor, | find the possibility of other
types of passion that can allow us to shift from confrontation and aggressive obtaining of
things to an ongoing and nurturing process of complicity and exchange. If we can do this
together, we can create ecodependant relationships that acknowledge and reclaim our
vulnerabilities as an impulse of transformation based on our primary understanding that,
like the interconnected nodes of the internet, we also are a web of relationships. And in
the face of the continuum of violence, we find each other in so many ways, creating all
these feelings that inspire us and make us strong in the tide from the individual to the
collective, back and forth.

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Critical thinking:
imagining affective

technologies
Vero Ariza

Historically, technology has been a demonstration of human intervention/transformation
on Nature. We can't conceive the history of humanity without our technical skills and the
artifacts that have enhanced our mental and physical abilities as conscious beings. But
technology and, more precisely, technological develooment —as a cultural matter—
hasn't been neutral; on the contrary, it’s the particular framework of certain parts of the
population: elites and privileged groups that assume they are custodians of the absolute
and true knowledge, the one and only science and all relevant technologies.

Fortunately, contemporary critical theory (that has also given an account of other
perspectives —those of subaltern or marginalized groups like women and poor, racialized
and colonized bodies, etc.—) has revealed other life stories, opening the possibility of
other narratives about our relationship to knowledge, science, and technology.

Hegemonic history has made us believe that only some have the ability to produce
knowledge and create technology. From our perspective, this official discourse, based on
modern thinking and certain principles, must be dismantled if we want to imagine worlds
where technology isn't perceived as a threat (especially by more vulnerable people and
communities) but a way of fulfilling our different needs, a way of affecting and bonding.

Modern philosophy relies on binaries: one extreme, more desirable or perceived as
supreme, dominates. Binaries like man/woman, human/animal, culture/nature,
reality/fiction, and a whole list of etceteras. A dichotomous relationship where,
supposedly, the limits are clear between one element and another. This way of conceiving
the world not only is limited at an epistemological level but has also been extremely
harmful ethically and politically. Regarding what brings us here now, as an example we

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can examine the binary human/nature that has promoted the (crazy) idea that humans are
not part of nature —feminine and threatening— and, in consequence, must impose and
dominate. Another example is the dichotomy science/culture which implies that
intellectualizing and living are different things: the intellect is a space to produce (true)
scientific knowledge, whereas living together, (re)creating, and loving is not productive.
Both examples are an account of an épistémé@ that defines our vision/relationship with
Nature —as external to us, from which we can obtain whenever we want— and
knowledge —reserved to certain people and groups, invisibilizing the cultural and
epistemic diversity there actually is—.

Buried underground, because of our "distance" to Nature and the elite idea that
knowledge is a "human nature", is the vast intelligence of animals as interdependent
beings with feelings, emotions, and affections; and our creative and cognitive ability as
humans to live in symbiosis with other humans, other species and all sorts of machines.

Dismantling dominant thinking requires more than reading and debating, it calls for
real feminist cyborg decoding/reprogramming, partial connections (Haraway), software
—complex thinking (Morin}— and hardware —arts of doing (De Certeau), but, most of all,
wetware —bodies, fluids and human agency—(Wajcman). In other words, to abolish the
hegemonic (patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial) model of knowledge/technology, we need
to create communities, develop shared ethics of care, defend an open and collaborative
knowledge and follow sustainability as a life principle (Shiva).

We need to redefine, from a post-human critical and creative affirmative political
framework, what is human to create alternative projects (Braidotti). This design implies
acknowledging not only the fundamental role of technology (as a tool for information and
communication) in the 21st century but the intrinsic technological virtue of humankind.
We have not just created technologies throughout history but we are technologies in
ourselves. And as such, we are free, we cooperate, we sustain, etc.

https://michel-foucault.com/key-concepts/

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Yes, We Match!
Love in the App era

ValeVale

| How do new technologies embed into our sexo-
affective relationships?

| How do the ways we use our smartphones merge
into our bodies?

| How do our ideas and experiences of love and
sexuality transform in the App era?

These are some questions that have sparked my curiosity lately around technology and
relationships. | think about Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto (1984) that describes a
cyborg that creates a new disruptive ontological vision and dismantles the dichotomies of
me/other, mind/body, culture/nature, man/woman, reality/appearance, private/public,
everything/art, god/mankind, human/machine. Since | read this manifesto, | couldn't stop
asking myself: What is my personal experience of cyborg embodiment?

In Haraways' notion of the cyborg, gender as a construct dissolves, giving way to a
body that is an open organism, hybrid, everchanging, connected to Nature and technology
—in a complex mutual collective and personal synergy. My way of understanding this
theoretical proposal is that technology is part of my existence, of my fluid identity,
embedded into my body, emotions, and territory as a part of my transformation and
destiny. Technology transits through my body, interacts with my territory, opens up

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20

personal and political possibilities. But how? How do | embody this technology in this
territory | live in? And most of all: how has technology filtered into my day-to-day life and
transformed me?

| feel that | live in a historical context where most of my feelings and emotions
originate, develop, change and extinguish conditioned by technology. | also feel this with
my affections. We are forever trackable, traceable, we can know what is happening
anywhere in any given moment, responsive in seconds, we flirt, we deceive, we become
technology. | feel more and more attracted to discovering the complex interactions
between sexuality, emotions, feelings, love, and technology and the fields of possibility
that open up. My embodied experiences of friendship, sexual or loving are in constant
interaction with technology, opening up space for my own embodiment (until now hardly
imagined), to vulnerability, pain, and violence.

New virtual territories emerge from the crossroads of human existence and
technology, where old and new sexual and affective habits are produced and transformed.
| consider important to study and understand without moral judgment these habits. | want
to adopt a multi-voiced method of thinking that can listen to diversity with enough
curiosity to understand the complexity and see both the positive and negative potential of
these ways of interaction.

For this purpose, | have asked several friends to send me voice messages of
meaningful experiences with technology centered on sexuality, emotions, and
embodiment. For example, experiences related to Tindr, OkCupid, sexting, dick pics,
erotic photos, ghosting on social media, and much more.

The final result will be a Podcast called Yes, We Match! available in 2020.

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Short stories of the web

Anamhoo

| Networks

<h1>My life on the web</h1>
<h2>1<\h2>

451 months

1966 weeks

13765 days

19777776 minutes

and the milliseconds

keep on ticking anxiously

How long have you lived? it's called the page
how long have you lived?
<h2>2<\h2>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Today | woke up a little bit
dead</p>&mdash; Anamhoo (@Anamhoo) </a></blockquote>

<h2>3<\h2>

Google won't cry

for my absence,

we should offer at least
songs

at least flowers

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<h2>4<\h2>

Statistics:

50 messages per month,

void of emotion...

and all the times | said <:

3

ah! statistics never get it.
<h2>computer pirate</h2>

i steal a #bottleinthesea

"It could be a marvelous day with sun and all of that but it feels empty to me"
could | go to jail 'cos of copyright?
We are already

trapped in

a virtual space

Il Three haikus about the web

It wasn't the wind

that crossed the mountains You travel through light
your voice in the light and come to my bed Your voice travels
web spy in small packets of

zeros and ones

J) 2 Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Imagining re-existence

through resistance
Firuzeh Shokooh Valle

Grassroot movements have unveiled the dangers of our technologies: internet
corporatization; the capitalist logic that defines the design and infrastructure of
our technology; the socio-technical methods of surveillance and State
discipline; the circuits of labor, exploitation, and oppression that produces
most of our technology; and the electronic contamination that contributes to
the destruction of our planet. Technology is intertwined, very closely, with the
inequities around us, colonialism, predatory development, misogyny,
LGTBQI/phobia, racism, and classism. This knowledge and acknowledgment of
technology roots into affection: a threading of digital realms and infrastructure
that, more and more, occupies our political, territorial, and intimate spaces.
From here, we build politics of shared responsibility based on feminist, anti-

racist, anti-capitalist, and ecological values and principles.

My work in the feminist cooperative Sula Batsu in Costa Rica has nurtured
my vision on how to become accountable together for shared technology
through creativity and pleasure. Sula Batsti's local and collective approach to
technology is based on the earth and the land; the knowledge and experience
of marginalized communities that encompass rural women, indigenous people,
and youth. They build, think and feel digital technology through a collective
body that, from a place that is marginalized and _ invisibilized, enables
transformation and opens paths of solidarity; love towards others, towards the

earth, towards shared spaces. They envision a world where technology is co-

Let us imagine: 9) 3
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24

created, localized, conceived, and felt in collective. A conception rooted in the
South, an affective and political imaginary that shapes the people that are part
of these places —from the South, or the South of the North— that have
resisted and will continue to resist the multiple shades of violence. How they
see technology is intimately related to how they see life and the world, a sort
of decolonial insurrection that holds wisdom and knowledge born on the
shores and the edges. It's not the perspective of who arrives but of those that
have always been producing knowledge. It's the perspective of the resistance,

the proposal of a re-existence.

When we think about creating techno-politics of shared responsibility
that integrate an ecological perspective, it has to come from a place of
affections and solidarity. The eurocentric paradigm set to one side emotion as
a source of knowledge and established a framework of modernity based on
violence, oppression, and injustice. A violence that has also given way to
ecological destruction that impacts marginalized communities. | think that it's
important to push forward changes in policies and governance at a national,
regional, and transnational level but it's even more relevant to transform within
communities. Feminists —as academics and activists of this American
continent have taught us— need to reclaim affection and feelings as the

architect of the world we dream of. And technology is a vital part of that world.

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Biotechnological evocation

Elyaneth

| really enjoy writing on paper though we've lost the habit and you can't edit
errors. | decided to articulate my reflection on technology and affection based
on how my friend Guadalupe and | communicate: Guadalupe doesn't have a
smartphone and | miss her deeply. | miss her when I'm walking in the
mountains, when I'm far away from the computer, when | don't have phone
signal. That's why | write her letters and send her photos of them through

email.

Technology is part of our relationships, of nearly all of them. If we
consider the history of the planet and humanity, digital technology has

appeared in the last moments of cosmic time.

Through technology, we've been able to dream and materialize many
inconceivable situations. It enables control over ecosystems and there seem to
be no limits: we look for traces of life in other planets whilst society and
economy operate as if natural resources were endless. It seems that we've
forgotten that, to keep on defining our dreams at an individual and collective
level, we need the earth to maintain us. The generations that now inhabit this
planet live among diverse forms of life that have unequal access to resources,

including technological resources.

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26

We need many paradigm shifts to redirect our ways of living and relating

between people and natural ecosystems.

In this searching (as part of a workshop | am participating in), | reflect
and engage with a concern that inhabits me when | recall the landscapes | love,
when | recall the trees that don't exist anymore, when | recall the rivers from
which we cannot drink from: what must be done so that we discover the part
of ourselves that longs to re-connect with Nature? If we restore our emotional
ties with the environment, would the way we use and manage technology

change?

My commitment to engaging with other allies and friends will be to find
ways of conscious and mindful relationships with technology, conceiving them
as inseparable from the resources that sustain them. Also to share experiences
in local territories and acknowledge emotional re-existence in our contexts and
lives. As women, we can feel-think, communicate and give new meanings to our

contexts and our relationship with technology.

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hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Understanding the internet as
territory through journalism

San Gayou

In the same way that the internet is territory, journalism disseminated through
the internet is a trench. Journalism from a gender perspective is a political
standpoint but far from being a discussed issue in most news writing desks, a

negligence that infringes womens’ integrity and rights in the digital realm.

Women have been part of news media editorials since nearly the
beginning and having a gender perspective is a requirement in how information
is handled but in practice it isn't. The rise of the internet has shifted the priority

to speed, not veracity.

Headlines continue to convey this lack of consideration, not only of the
violence against women but also of the inaction, inefficiency, and flaws of

institutions when comes to justice.

Communication companies self-censor themselves in an attempt to
survive in a capitalist system that forces them to depend on paid advertising
by the State or private companies, putting at stake the readers' credibility and
blurring editorial lines (those who claim to have them). This regarding private

media. Free independent media is another story.

8) 8 Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Internet and social platforms have pushed media into competing for likes,
followers, and outreach, measuring success through Facebook and Google

stats under the statement that "you need to publish what people want to see".

Many headlines continue to announce "she was killed in the name of
love", "you can only be mine". These articles are written by male journalists
chasing the "punch line" without analyzing in detail how violence is a reflection
of patriarchal structure rooted in society that revictimizes and criminalizes

those affected by structural and femicide violence.

Information reaches the internet first. The quickest in publishing "wins
the article" and even better if it spreads into this lawless territory where
internet traffic is based on the bloodiest photo or the most sensationalist

headline.

In light of all of this, there are few media outlets and editors that are
committed to doing gender-perspective journalism; an example of this is
inclusive language and how it’s dismissed in the name of the Royal Spanish

Academy

One of the main challenges is not only the participation of women in this
media ecosystem but a gender perspective in media that contributes to

building spaces free of patriarchal violence.

It's about using the right words and informing clearly and accurately
about violent acts and their origin, as well as pointing out an adequate
administration of justice in a country like Mexico where this is still not a reality.

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29

30

Precariousness, feelings,

and technology

SI

ania Acevedo

This reflection starts, necessarily, with the conditions that enable me to
present this proposal for the Hackfeminist Gathering. In principle, | have a
flexible job that allows me to go on leave or travel without risking losing my
job. Every three months, | sign a contract that cancels out any type of job
security. | read on Twitter a few weeks ago that having a paid job should be
considered a privilege. Though the concept of work troubles me, | understand
the concern expressed in this tweet. | recall myself a couple of months ago in
the house | have lived in for 26 years, without leaving my room, depressed
because | didn't have a job neither the hope of any type of future. | also revive
the conversations on Telegram with my friend A where he informed me
disappointed that we hadn't passed the teacher job exam; also, in those same
conversations, we would share techniques on how to cook beans, rice, and
lentils because that was our way of surviving unemployment. We did this with
joy because sharing recipes imply wanting someone to eat deliciously and be a

little bit happy at least.

| can't avoid thinking about how | got this job and realize that it was by
chance. By pure chance! | don't want to create in my head this idea that |
deserve it more than anyone else because | know that's not true. And that
makes me assume that in this job and my past jobs, | have been completely
replaceable. Perhaps this is a pessimist perspective, but it allows me to
understand the economic system | live in and consider that my experience of

depression is not just an individual problem but expresses the discomfort that

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

many live like me when they can't find a job that allows them something like a
.. decent life? (what does that look like?) or any job at all. At the same time,
this feeling encourages me to inhabit other spaces where we share and bond in

ways that aren't necessarily competitive or compensated with money or prizes.

Working in unstable jobs encourages us to imagine how to be
accountable for the material aspects of our lives like health, housing and
education; in other words, how to create tools that can generate alternative
economies, different types of relationships with service providers. Cassie
Thornton, anarchist artist and economist, presents a feminist framing of
economy in which we opt for creating collective and caring experiences. Only
then is it possible to re-imagine the sense of value? connected with care,
beyond economic productivity. To begin this exercise of imagination, Thornton
began to ask questions to friends and colleagues, searching if other people
also felt isolated and sad when facing debt and, in general, economical
instability in their lives. Some of the questions were: "How often are you out of
money? When you're out of money, how do you feel? what effect does it have
on you internally and externally? What types of economical self-defense do
you have?". The answers to these questions revealed that we tend to isolate
ourselves when we encounter economical hardship because of a prevailing
sense of shame for not being socially "successful" and, instead of reaching out
to a care network, we expect to change our economical and emotional

situation on our own.

To talk about life and care, about the responsibility that | have over
myself and others implies inevitably to be affected by what | experience every
day and realize that, despite everything, | can rely on a network that allowed

me to participate in this Hackfeminist Gathering. | was surrounded by women

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31

that | love and admire for all the possible ways of life that open up in my
imagination. New ways of relating with value emerge. | would like to continue
experimenting with networks where we create tools and channels that allow us
to look after each other in a community that acknowledges vulnerability and
the need for accompaniment. | think that creating these care networks make us
accountable for establishing other types of relationships that bring us beyond
the feeling of sadness that this economic system pulls us into, a system where
we can't manage collectively our means and have to adapt to what is
presented as the only type of relationship possible. The lack of economical
stability produces anxiety that wears most of us down, but also forces us to

build care networks that question this value® that we want to assume in our

lives and the technology that can enable that.

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Affective Infrastructures

Alma Martinez/ Rosaura Zapata

| go back to the “History and class consciousness" by G. Lukacs, to re-think the
analysis of commodity-structure as a "central, structural problem of capitalist
society in all its aspects" and as a "model of all the objective forms of
bourgeois society together with all the subjective forms corresponding to

them".

Broadly speaking, based on these ideas, | think of my participation as a
questioning of the underlying labor relations of our infrastructure, in other

words, all relationships that result from mandatory payment-based work.

On a short or mid-term, these relationships will also be epistemic and

affective.

Why don't we review our work relationships? Should all of them be

mediated by money?
And if so, we could ask: what is the exchange? why are they paying you?
what is the understanding that each person involved has? are you paid for your

work? and for your will?

When resources come from funding, in which ways do they become the
lead voice? Do they pay and order?

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34

When it comes from self-management, we peek into Alice's window. The
variety of shapes, smells, colors, and material nature of sources tends to
confuse. Resources can be accumulated depending on time, interest,

imagination...

In the communities | participate in, even though we have been able to
create workspaces that experiment with new types of relationships, habits that
endorse a power scheme continue to prevail, along with objectivization and

alienation.

Forever permeated by affections, these connections cultivate friendship,
love, both long and short, in an extremely fragile patchwork. When affections
get messed up, toxic fraying relationships linger, comparisons surface, work is
invisibilized, contributions are understated and the ability to discuss
decreases. We allow the imposition of a neurotic mandate: whoever gets angry,

wins.

How do we invent a cooperative way of living? How do we organize
following a principle of equality? The decisions in the communities we are part
of, the things we accept, and how we address our affectivity puts together a

map of ourselves.

We swim counter-flow every time we renounce the overwhelming

demand of obeying hierarchy.

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hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

The means are the ends.

Love as a method.
Guiomar Rovira

The human condition is desiring, the vital impulse sucks us out of ourselves in
time and space, no more roots that hold us back. At some point, we pulled out
our feet from the earth and started to move, searching, a limited time that
drives our existence towards an endless death. The law of gravity and the
theory of relativity explains continental tectonic movements, the scattering
planets and celestial objects in expanding constellations, cores of fatal
attraction, black holes. The force that never ceases, Newton's apple seeks the

floor. Relentlessly we fall.
But something impels us beyond, transgresses all determination: love.
When a woman is pregnant, she crosses the universe.

Life challenges death with an elusive persistence. Love is an abundance of
life in a thousand shapes and colors. Its fascinating diversity is useless and
everything at the same time: limitless beauty, a transgression that blows up any
prescription to an end, love is the desire to love. The ends are the means and
the means are the ends. Love as a method. For love we become extraordinary:

life as a miracle. Useless finite contingency of an endless desire.

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36

Love is the force that puts us in motion to defy the brutal entropy that
drags us. Against the hybrid war that harasses and expels us, we have love.
They are a few but they have power and violence. Love is a network. We've
never been so many, we've never known so much. Without power, we can live.

Without love, they can’t.

Caring takes a lot of effort. It's hard to raise human beings. It goes against
time, it opens up time, gives time, 9 months of patient care, 2 years, 18 suns to
become a fruit... To love is to refuse the end, rebel against insignificance. To
create a lifespan away from death is only possible if shared and collective.

Love is the will to love. It's meaning and creation. It's freedom.

Communication allows us to bond, support each other, weaving infinite
possibilities of gathering and potential. Infinite ways of loving. The network is
the purpose, is the end. The means are the ends. For a constellation that
enables the flow of life. A network that distributes goods, resources that don't
drain out but grow when sharing. Against power and money that are dead
things, against the ends that break the means to create extractive machines of

destruction.

| suggest a philosophical reflection about the meaning of networks and
techniques. To turn upside down the dialectic of enlightenment and the
challenging temptation of power and money that co-opt all spaces.
Nonsensical totalization. To think the incomplete, the hybrid, the impure, and
the need to make contingent decisions, free of morale, develop imaginaries
that free the desire to love and enable us to be more interconnected. How to

shape, practice, and accompany our steps?

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hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Politics of digital

accountability: the new era
Poulette Hernandez

We are all consumers, despite our age, gender, taste, or profession, technology
(that facilitates and satisfies people's needs) begins to be a trend, the boom of
the 20th century. But, it's not just about using technology and digital media, it's
also about consumer responsibility. These responsibilities have to do with the
correct management of technology, from which stems a logic quite contrary to
what we understand as success, a logic of ecotechnology, revolutionary and
utopian ideas that collaborate for a cleaner world, with less consumerist trash
like the internet that has drastically increased electricity consumption in an
unsustainable way. Considering that traditional energy sources will run out in a
matter of decades, the digitalization of ourselves and all aspects of life can not
be what we imagine. It's unsustainable that a cellphone consumes like a fridge

or an ebook more carbon dioxide than reading on paper.

There will be a digital downfall at some point and resources will drain out
because of this extreme and excessive use of technology. Lucrative technology
corporations turn their backs on ecology and environmental commons. These
big companies focus on boosting their sales and not the correct and adequate
use of technology. We need to raise awareness and start building a vision
centered on community and kinship, leaving to one side consumerism and

selfishness.

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38

It's time to be responsible for digital transformation, in our lives, in our

organizations, and our business, it's time for a feminist, collaborative, and

community transformation. We are com

pletely confident about the benefits.

So, within the so-called digital era transformation, we need to insert, apart

from business culture changes, social an

digital transformation must be accountab

One example of this so-called

Google. | say "so-called" because it's fa

d community accountability because

e and sustainable.

social accountability reformation is

se because they continue to exploit

workers, feed consumerism, and, mos

information that they collect on their serv

Lots of tech companies use "gre

of all, they profit from data and

ers.

enwashing' to look environmentally-

friendly. But it's just a shallow makeover that uses green commerce to deceive.

So we need to start thinking about other ways of doing technology,

more communal, supportive, shared, fe
serious issues like defending life and la

alternative technologies.

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

minist, inclusive, more aware of the

nd. There are other ways, there are

Let us imagine: 3 9
itive technologies

40

Momentanea
Presence and being, the

relationship of time, space,
and affections with Nature
March Bermudez

This art project is a work in progress. | rack my brains, eager to question the unilateral
relations we establish with time, space, objects and the ''virtual" world because when we
say that we are connected, it has an impact on our territories, both land and bodies.
Even though | agree that the dichotomy online/offline doesn't exist, things change when
our relationship with technology and devices intersect with an economic system that
imposes duality and pushes us away from knowing about how things are created,
produced, and distributed.

We develop emotional, sentimental, and rational ties with our technology, but some
of us don't ask ourselves: where do they come from? what are they made of? who makes
them? what impact does my use have? what happens when | throw it away? why does our
technology change so fast? do these frenetic changes have anything to do with the
pressing demand of having to answer messages online in messaging applications?

And in this sense, we relate to technology from a unilateral, individual, and
anthropocentric perspective of time and space.

This project® seeks to question (ourselves) about the impact that our devices,
perception of time, and internet connection has on these territories of land and body, on
community and collective relationships, along with an analysis of how extractive (of

resources, knowledge, and cosmogonies®) economies create wars. How to make coherent

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

questions? In the beginning, | thought about making an online platform that would present
these issues. But that doesn't solve the problem, it adds onto it. Then | thought | could
create this platform on my 10-year-old computer that still works pretty well and turn it
into a server.

How it's going to work?

To avoid buying new equipment and creating e-waste, | will use my computer as a
server, a decentralized information node. The idea is that this online platform appears on
the internet for a certain period of time when a new article is published. Then, it turns off,
thus questioning the concept of time that demands us to be online, there all the time, or
not.

Magazine topics Things | need

= Turn my computer into a server
- Free up space
= Delete files

= Time socio-technological
configurations

= Environmental impact of technology :
= Calculate the carbon footprint based

on electricity consumption + carbon
footprint incorporated in electronic
devices

~ Affective relationships with our
devices, affective mapping —>
hydroelectric power plants, mining,

forced displacement = Think of ways of promoting the

project without creating social media
accounts (which have a footprint and
impact)

= | <3 my devices, how do | reduce my
environmental footprint?

= DIY — Building on what's already
created, there's already work done

= Research, write and publish

= Open call for contributions

If you like this idea and want to participate: write to march@ciberfemgt.org
Also, this artistic project has been changing, you can see the progress here
https://ciberfemgt.org/category/momentanea/

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41

42

We are the ways

we embody writing
Monica Nepote

I'm writing late and | ask myself, what do | mean by "late"? And | think, slowly, then
articulate: a pace that disobeys the mandatory rhythm, the pressing need to answer
immediately and in a certain way. | write late, | always feel like my answer is in delay.
Always with the guilt of being slow.

Some time back | got sick. A couple of years ago. Several relapses in tandem and
the last time or the second to last time, it was a significant disease, not severe in itself but
with distinctive symptoms. Everything | did required a tremendous effort: going down
hree flights of stairs where | lived with my daughter, bring her to the street corner where
he mother of a classmate would pick her up and go back several blocks and up the stairs
again. | knew it was serious because every exhausting action sucked up the little energy
eft inside of me and it was becoming just too much. | realized, perhaps, without knowing,
he cost of acceleration and also how my body was rebelling to that imposed pace. |
‘ound an acupuncturist that gave me, lying on a stretcher in their office, a mechanical
assessment: your organism is slow and slow organisms want everything quick. They
mentioned a 10 session treatment that would reset my body. My body was a computer in
heir metaphor and my operative system had to be deprogrammed through needles. After
some sessions, my body improved, it had reset and was working. | could now fulfill the
convenient pace of acceleration. My slow body wanted everything quick again. | was
productive and that was a warrant of my existence. My salary met the standards of work
overload. My body caught up with the pace of capitalist productivity, a system that
gobbles up everything, including time with my daughter and a load of things that | would
have wanted to have and develop at that point.

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hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

| wrote this text and now | am rewriting it, one year later, in light of a deep change
that happened in our lives: experimenting with a new cycle that gave us the perspective
of living in two cities. It meant conceiving us in the distance, in constant contact through
messages, communicating through our devices in systems that we know are insecure
because our literacy is never as learned as our way of loving each other. It meant talking
to each other in our own language through alphabetic typography, memes, stickers,
emoticons, creating our own communication program; it meant being at the mercy of
those who own the software we used, that, despite our doubts, we were there because
we needed each other, loved each other, learn from each other all the time.

| wrote then because this distance doesn't exist anymore but what remains
unquestionable and forever present is that this is my core reference of affection, this is the
heart that guides me in my learning of technology and that's what | want to weave here.
Feeling who we are: women, inhabitants of the 21st century, jumping from one violence to
another, living how we can.

Part of my utopian perception that | want to stop seeing as just a utopia is a safe
territory in all aspects, in my typographic characters, in my digital avatar, and in my flesh
avatar. | want a blossoming green space to share with my daughter, from whom | have
learned, not exempt from pain, that she is the love of my life. With whom | have found new
and different meanings of relationships and priorities, she has helped me realize that love
doesn't build on displacing women; in this case, (myself) for being a mother, that can be a
mother with my things and interests. That | can work and say that I'm fed up of working,
that | can be a mother and say I'm fed up of maternity, that doesn't feel incomplete
because she doesn't have a partner... and that translates into a variety of ways of loving,
a loving for what is alive and green, a loving of ideas, of being connected and having

certain spaces of distance. | wish my affective territories were clear and respected in an

online space that doesn't invade me, that allows me to show my love for my daughter and
loved ones without feeling that | fall into habits that expose me to discredit or censorship
or teasing or market spying or any type of perverse spying. | don't want to be the target
of... vulnerable to... | am writing late but on time, my body can breathe better because
between the beginning of this text and the end, days have passed, | have cried, | have
reflected, | have respected my silence and ripening, | have missed and | feel happy. Life
passes by and I'd like that to be reflected in my tone and color and the ways | embody
language. | am these words, these emotions, this answer | send you. | am this need to
write, to be heard, to share myself, to share-listen-understand-write-read you.

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

43

Everything lives

together intensely
Mariel Zasso

My existence is relational,

and even if | don't want to,

| affect and am affected.

By you, by her, by them,

by what | read and live,

by what | hear and touch.

To you, to her, to them,

by what | write and act and tell and sing and touch.

| had tea with Baruch and Gilles,

and they agreed:

there is no bad or good.

No wrong or right.

We are bodies pierced

by thousands of vectors of force.
Affected and affecting

sometimes even by accident.

They offered it to me and | bought it:

my moral is the moral of happiness.
What fuels my potential is right.

What saddens me is wrong.

But | don't exist if not in relationship-with.
In this complex equation between my thousands of vectors of force
and the thousands of vectors of force

of the thousands of others that surround me.

44 Let us imagine:
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And how to contour

he fact that this passion called sympathy,

he ability to let ourselves be affected,

decreases in intensity

when it expands?

How to let oneself be affected by those who aren't distant?

n space, context and affinity.

How can | be happy if people are suffering?!)

Until yesterday, what was distant
was hopelessly distant.
And now

hat networks enable

imitless
geographic and spatial

affection?

New vectors of force,
new languages,
new scenarios

to affect-be-affected.

It's nice to say,

"The internet is a network of people,

not computers"

But the land, the campesinos and the creole corn...
Conflict.

Corporate interest vs. common goods

How can we intensify life potential in a hyper-connected world?

How to look after each other in this new territory?

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

45

46

Re-writing by accident
(technological appropriation,

re-writing technologies)

la_ jes

since | can recall, my relationship with technology has been strange, proper, and improper
at the same time. The first time | realized that was when, as an adult, | participated in a
gathering. In one of the activities, | was invited to share my first memory of a
technological device;

the first thing that popped into my head was a blender. I’ve "locked myself" inside the
garage of my childhood house to play by myself. There's a big blackboard at one end,
colorful chalks in one hand, and a screwdriver in the other. | draw everything | see as |
dismantle the blender [how would | remember afterward where each piece went?!];

my heart beats strong. | can't let anyone inside and see this device all in bits and pieces.
I'm hiding because my dad doesn’t want to explain to me [like he does with my cousin,
who is a boy by the way] how to dismantle an object;

copy-paste explanation to my cousin;

he explained to him another object, | don't remember which, neither do | care to
remember. What | was really interested in were the tips my dad gave to my cousin: check
where each part goes when you take it out, put it near its place, compare it with a similar
object that does work and try to understand what doesn't to see which part you need to
change... Something like that he said. | was always nosing around- | really liked to be in the
warehouse with all the tools. The combination of dust, spiderwebs, and hoarded "useless

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

objects" fascinated me. Besides, when we were there, no-one came to "bother"; a sort of
place and no-place at the same time. You could lose yourself there for hours and breathe
calmly and freely. It was a room of your own®. But it was their room. | couldn't go there by
myself;

so, as | was saying, I’m in the garage of my childhood house with a dismantled blender
and my heart beats strong: I’m alone there because I’m not allowed to disarm that
blender and | need to be by myself to concentrate and "break it" at ease because, once
I've finished, everything has to be exactly like it was before, as if nothing had happened,
as if no screwdriver had outwitted the honor of this object;

that day, my smiley face vanishes and my heart beats loud in satisfaction. I’ve opened up
and put back together a blender. On the blackboard, in that cold and dark garage where
people seldom enter, remains a colorful scribble that nobody pays attention to. That
garage was mine for a while.

Throughout the years, my technological "accomplishments and stunts" became more
skillful [or that’s what | said to myself the first time | saw a diagram of an object that a

ok
i)

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

47

friend, industrial engineering student, had designed. It looked "so much" like my drawing.] |
learned how to set up simple electric systems, use a drill, build furniture and change
water taps fixing leaks from-who-knows-where. | hold onto this memory of how irritated |
would get with the idea that "an outsider has to come to fix" simple things that |, with my
two hands, can do or at least try to;

| don't recall how | learned these things. | think close observation has been the best non-
advice someone has ever given to me. | think that every time | set out to solve a
"hardware" problem, | close my eyes, and the colorful chalk drawing, on that blackboard,
in that cold garage, keeps popping up in my head and it's kind of like my "toolbox", my
"installation guide", my reference of "do-it-yourself";

maybe because of that, | find it easier to relate to "hardware" than "software" though,
honestly, | think that we have the opportunity to transform, that we should update our

operative systems more often because, if not, our programs will run on obsolete systems;

| learned on my own, since | was little, observing how the idiot boxes that contain the
"real" technology work: the one we build to "make our lives easier". It took many more
years for me to realize that those "real" technologies were written, designed, and
produced by other people under certain ways of seeing the world. It hadn't occurred to
me to question "software" until | understood that maybe the world vision taught to us
wasn't where | felt respected and worthy;

so | began to transit the different ways of making "software" through words, through
gestures, through all the codes we walk within the worlds that surround us;

# apt install rewriting-technology.d

A8 Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

y/ P/ OBS Py Cay

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v

5

We shared part of this content in audio format: a script and an oral testimony
with a strength that, apart from its content, resides in its potential of breath and

voice.

Cooking with JovitA
Podcast script ©

~ Fera Briones/Chavela Goldman — podcast

SEGMENT

TEXT

—
Welcome to the Cooking with JovitA show
[Short musical break]

A homemade eco-friendly podcast without disposable waste, please.
Here we will learn how to prepare simple, cheap, and delicious meals
with a unique seasoning of rebellion and freedom for these
precarious moments.

[Short musical ©

Hello, beautiful elves of light!

This is JovitA, with A of Anarchy, greeting you from my undercover
kitchen in some part of the Monster City; where cooking, more than
an act of need, is a supreme gesture of love and pleasure that we can
do for ourselves and others.

Today we will learn how to make the prime meal of the sefiora's —

Let us imagine:

hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Listen |

recipe book: dry noodle soup. That dish that you've surely had during
your tender years, prepared with the devoted hands of your
caregivers when you were feeling low or sad. A delicious filling soup
with a spicy twist and it’s very cheap!

So go grab your notebook and pen and write down the ingredients
we'll need to cook this homemade delicacy... or your tablet or
whatever tech thingy that suits you if writing by hand is too old
school for you.

[Short musical break]

a
Ready?

For four greedy well-served portions we'll need:

~ 200 gram of thin type 0 noodles (basically a full packet) that you
can find in any food store

— 1/4 of a big onion

~ 1 clove of garlic

_ 3-4 tomatoes

~ 1 or 2 chipotle chiles, depending on how spicy you want your dish

- 2 spoons of oil; olive oil is better because it's healthier for our
heart and arteries

~ 1 cup of water

_ 1/4 teaspoon —or, as my friends of Yucatan say, a 'shish'— of
oregano

~ A'shish' of salt and pepper for a bit of flavor.

[Short musical break]

Damn! I've just realized I've run out of chipotles...

Let me ask Pantuflo, my feline assistant [miaow effect], to run off to
the corner shop while | carry on washing tomatoes and tell you about
my dear and awesome Russian anarchofeminist friend that gained the
reputation of being the "most dangerous woman of the world": Emma
Goldman.

Let us imagine: 5 "|
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

5

Let us imagine:

It so happens that Goldman emigrated from Russia to the States back
in 1885. There she worked as a textile worker and that's where she
joined the anarchist movement, mainly made up of workers and
European migrants.

Long story short, in 1919, they deported her back to Russia due to
her rebellious and fierce nature. She strolled around from Europe to
Canada where she wrote her glorious autobiography Living my life
that | really recommend you have a look at —you can find it on the
internet.

Hey! I'll get back to the stories in a bit. Pantus arrived and it's nearly
time to eat so let's get to it.

[Short musical break] ©

Now that we have all our ingredients, let's pour some oil into a
medium-sized pot and turn on the cooker at medium heat.

While the oil heats up, we can chop the onions and garlic and set
them aside on a plate.

Once the oil is ready, we throw in the noodles and stir until they are
evenly golden brown. Don’t burn them!

Carefully serve the noodles in a plate or container and leave them for
later.

To make the broth, the actual essence of our noodles, we're going to
blend the tomatoes and chipotles with a cup of water. You can add
extra water if you want a thinner soup.

hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Listen |

By the way, super dofia tip: to save time, especially if you're really
hungry, you can preheat the water. Your soup will be ready in a flash.

Since we're eco-friendly, we're going to recycle the same cooking pot

to stir-fry the onion and garlic until translucent. We add in the broth

and that's when the magic kicks in with a bit of oregano, salt, and
pepper. Season as you wish.

| like seasoning little by little 'cos when you overdo the salt, there's no
going back, honey. And always, always taste as you go, ok?

Now let's give some time for that broth to cook at low heat so that all
those ingredients can mingle together and create that tasty flavor.a

While we wait for our soup to boil, I'm going to carry on talking about
my friend Emma.

So all the hassle that Goldman and her comrades made was key in
spreading socialist anarchism all over North America and part of
Europe. Besides, Emma was a fruitful and kind writer and through
her many articles, manifestos, and novels, she shared thoughts,
existential concerns, and other ideas that became a foundation for
anarchism.

That's right, my dears, none other than a WOMAN, a fact that can
shut up your average sexist pig when they say something stupid like
"woman can't theorize and question reality" —l've been told that
before.

But, most of all, Emma Goldman became a feminist symbol and the
Lady of the Barricades for getting into more than one fight with her
feminist peers.

Let us imagine:
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53

5

Let us imagine:

‘Cos, her vision of "living your own life" —based on freedom,
relationships, and affections — was a purpose in itself and a crucial
aspect of social change, something that wasn't discussed back then.

In her 1910 book “Anarchism and other essays”, Goldman developed
a series of pioneer ideas around issues that remain polemic: the
futility of voting, sex work, marriage, sexuality, and love.

Unlike most suffragettes back then, she thought that feminine
independence couldn't be achieved with economical improvement or
concessions granted by institutions but through a_ radical
transformation of our way of thinking and living. She wasn't really into
equality policies and all that.

Wait a second, we'll get back to the story in a bit. The soup is
bubbling...

[Short musical break] )

As you can see, our soup is turning red because the tomatoes are
cooked. This is when we adjust our seasoning for the last time so go
ahead, try it out and see if you want to add a little something.

Tasty, right? I'm drooling already...
Now we can add the noodles we fried before and let them cook for
another 10 minutes or until the water consumes. Be careful! Don't

burn it!

[Short musical break]

hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Listen |

Emma Goldman wanted to radically change the way of thinking and
feeling the world, so that women could be free. A goal that can’t be
achieved trying to be the same as men and _ following their
patriarchal, racist, classist system; pure death and destruction
sustained by a load of oppression that doesn't only affect women but
all people that aren't white straight high-class men.

For Emma, resisting and rejecting all forms of domination requires
freeing ourselves, breaking all the obstacles and boundaries that
create economic, psychological, and even emotional dependence.
Questioning sexuality and reproduction becomes essential, especially
for women, because my friend Goldman believes that sexuality is a
powerful source of creative synergy and affective relationships are
indispensable in the individual and social transformation we need to
bring down hegemonic social order.

So forget about all that shame and taboo associated with feminine
sexuality. All the contrary, for Goldman, giving new meanings to our
intimate relationships is a fundamental step towards revolutionizing
our daily lives.

But wait, don't get me wrong, she wasn't talking about low pseudo-
polyamorous behavior, sleeping with people without emotional
accountability, and neglecting shared agreements — normally guys,
by the way, that "use" feminist discourse pretending to be "cool" but
actually are just assholes that end up hurting women.

My dears, that isn't re-shaping or giving new meaning. That's just plain
old being a jerk.

Ups! | need to check on my noodle casserole. | don't want to burn it!

[Short musical break]

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

eke)

5

Let us imagine:

All under control friends. We've turned off the stove and our meal
looks delicious.

| suggest you serve it hot with a bit of cheese sprinkled on top and, if
we're feeling hedonistic, a bit of avocado too.

Well there you go, that's our spicy chipotle noodle soup, like | said at
the beginning of the show, a classic meal and low-budget
delicatessen to share or for your pleasure.

| hope you've enjoyed preparing this recipe as much as | have and
that you've gotten a bit curious about this anarchofeminist goddess
Emma Goldman.

Lastly, I'd like you to tune into our next podcast Cooking with JovitA
where we will learn how to prepare a classic dish: stuffed chiles,
those that people fight over when it's on the menu and maybe I'll get
to talk to you about another rebellious friend 'cos there's a lot of
superwomen out there that have done amazing things but are
invisibilized because of #patriarchy.

Sending lots of love [kiss sound effect] and remember, more than a
need, cooking and sharing a meal with our close ones is an act of

love and pleasure.

[Short musical break and —fade out—]

hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Listen |
The voice ofa

community broadcaster
Lili Ayuujk —

I'm Lilia Pérez Diaz.

On this topic of technology and affection holding this question how to outline
= accountability, | don't have much experience but | feel that
technology is immersed now, © in our communities.

\'m from Tlahuitoltepec, mixe, Oaxaca, the © = = mountains.

We're at 2700 m above Sea level.
We speak ayuuk tongue.

lam ~~ andacommunity broadcaster onthe ——~—sradiio..
| also participate in Neeju kiiny, @ el)! cell |= 1\/= where we use technology
=o) see FeACN OUtto more communities, raise awareness,
reflect pine happening, what is happening to us, about
issues thataffect usaswomenandmen = ————— au, CULTU Key
these thoughts that seek to strengthen our Community life and, on the way,

intersecting with all types of technological ~~ like computers,
control panels, all the equipment required for doing radio, like sound
recorders, mobile phones.

Nowadays, the Internet... without thinking about it, without asking for it,
the tools arrive andwe Claim them in our communities. These
toolsalso create =) © > ))\-> >> new types of relationships

within our community contexts.

Let us imagine: 57
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

We've realized, I've realized that many issues = because of
these tools. For example, in the municipal council of mi community there
have been incidents where couples divorce, ruptures or even
cashes oye related to using these tools, because they «/°\))) (>) how
to use them or because they used them and had ACCeSS because ACCESS
is SO €asy, to use and manipulate these tools like mobile phones.

Most of the time, when a man cheats on his wife or partner she
finds out because there is a tool which =i) (=\/lel-Jple-that it
happened jie! it’s used for this reason. iii = ==) fy Winey
relationships are changing. Also, among youth, now, we look at
young people and they’re really hooked to these tech tools; not to the
“> or the TV like before when, for a short period of time, TV was really
present, the family would watch TV channels, and you could stilt limit,
how muchand you saw.

The tools we have now like © in several spots in the community,
There’s internet signal, sonow — youcan’t limit young people in how
And this creates GiStaNCe within the community.
Interpersonalrelationships© = even When you re at
home. You can communicate with your dad, with your mum, with your
i\n0)|\Y just through your phone, = 12) <=ycll= voice messages through
WhatsApp and these types of interactions are changing relationships.
And how do they affect ourbody? impact = |
changes on physical, mental, and emotional health.

5 Let us imagine:

hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

Listen |

How this distancing See || 2))> that we have and should
have as human beings, relating, communicating, direct
communication between father and mother, between father and
mother and children, between the whole family, because the distance
is growing and it is affecting our SOCial relationships, our ©
relationships HOW we also makes these decisions,
facing many issues that come up.

Apart from all the things we see apuceeiivs, italso allows us to jel |o)li/elly
denounce, instead of directly to certain authorities. when we see that
the authority isn’t working Well or isn’t —_ doing their job, then some
people use SOCial media to report and expose, to feel
that we can achieve something if we denounce in public.

Or when our territories are invaded or subject to mining
concessions, or hydroelectric plants, | these channels help us raise Our voice,
so we can >> what is happening from OUF OWN.
In other words, to feel that youcan achieve using these means.

Things that these technologies enable us.

lalso think weneed == how we
frame our use of technology, our politics, maybe very local, that have an
impact = 55 certain community agreements, | don’t know.
Maybe the way we _ think when and how we use them in certain
communities and groups, for certainpages and — ~~ that can be
controlled by community providers.

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

39

60

This could be an action. And as women, how this affects usin,
porn sites, human trafficking and how there are girls and boys
that are affected through these means because of how they are being used.

We need to continue thinking about how this iS affecting
us, how we are living these social relationships in our realities, the ways of
mediating these interactions, these habits, the ways in which we
communicate... orality, ourlanguage, the ayuuk
tongue, all that it implies.

This is a bit of how | can contribute to what we are thinking together about
these issues and |hope | can continue to do so in this gathering. —
will also carry on reading about how our feelings and relationships are
affected o benefited through media through technology

now that we are immersed in all of this.

Let us imagine:
hackfeminist writings for alternative technologies

This book is in progress: we continue to weave and edit inspired by
hackfeminism that seeks other worlds and ways of understanding and

embodying technology.

If we were to put some type of launch date or first version of this quilt, it

would be October 2020 in which we take a break and rethink ourselves.

This publication is completely designed with libre free software: Scribus,
Inkscape and Krita. We have also opted for free fonts: Xolonium for the

headers, HK Grotesk for the body text.